Arthur Upfield - The Widows of broome

“Front or back?” asked Walters.

“Back. No answer to our knocking, we break in.”

A cinder path skirted the house and Bony asked his companions to walk off it. The same tracks he had seen on the drive were on this path. He noted that there was no veranda along this side of the house, and therefore no shutters. At the rear the cinder path ended at a cemented area between the house and what appeared to be a combined wood-shed and laundry. Beyond the cement, another path wound onward to disappear among scatteredti -tree bush.

Bony pounded on the kitchen door.

“Let me push it,” urged Sawtell when no one responded.

“Wait.”

Bony bent down and placed an ear to the keyhole. He was then sure that what he thought he heard was fact. Within the house was a peculiar noise, a sound not unlike water gurgling down the outlet of a bath. For ten seconds, Bony listened. The noise continued, and there was strange rhythm in it.

“Have either of you a gun?” Bony asked.

Walters shook his head and Sawtell said he always relied on his hands. The sergeant stood before the door, raised a foot and shot it forward with such force that the door crashed inward and was almost torn off its hinges. It seemed that the three men entered at the same instant.

Bony jumped to a window and let up the spring blind. They were in an ordinary kitchen off which was the bathroom. A passage ran through the centre of the house, and beyond the far end could be seen the battens enclosing the front veranda. The kitchen was small and tidy. On the floor lay a smallpomeranian dog, its flanks working, and from its mouth issuing the noise like water draining away from a bath. There was blood on the patterned linoleum beneath its jaw, and its eyes were partially closed.

Sawtell looked into the bathroom and followed the inspector and Bony into the passage. Bony opened doors. The first two gave entry to small bedrooms. The left front-room door was open. It was the lounge. The door opposite was closed. Gripping the door-handle only with the tips of forefinger and thumb, Bony opened the door and pushed it inward.

The interior was dark. Bony struck a match, and the tiny flame revealed a white bed. He edged round the door-post and found the light switch, and with the corner of the match-box pressed upon the small knob. There was no resultant light.

“The master switch,” he directed, and heard one of the policemen run to the veranda. Waiting in the darkness, he flailed his mind for evidence of failure in himself, for having omitted something which should have been done, and which might have prevented what he thought he had seen in the flickering light of his match.

The fight blazed on, and behind Bony the inspector cried thinly:

“He got her! The swine!”

The room was made to appear smaller than it was by the furniture, of which there was too much. There was a three-quarter-size bed. The bedspread was rose-pink, and it, with the blanket and top sheet, was folded back. Lying on the bed was a woman. Her body was naked. She was lying on her back, her legs straight, her arms close to her sides. The face and neck were in sharp contrast to the whiteness of the rest of the body, and the white pillow was equally as sharp in contrast with the woman’s rather long black hair. She must have been in her late twenties, and quite good-looking.

That the woman was dead was obvious. Beside the bed was the woman’s nightgown. Bony stooped for it. It was ripped from neck to hem, and with it he covered the body.

“In the wardrobe, Sawtell,” Bony said whilst gazing upon the outline of the pathetic figure masked by cream-coloured silk. “No disorder in the room. The arrangement of the bedclothes precisely the same. She must have been off the bed when he strangled her, or if he strangled her on the bed then he removed the body to tidy the bedclothes. He is controlled by habits which are powerfully dominant when he’s mentally normal… if he is now ever normal, which I much doubt. I see him as a man unable to tolerate untidiness. Have you found the bundle, Sawtell?”

“Yes,” replied the sergeant.“In a far corner of the wardrobe.”

“We won’t examine it now. Bring a broom, please. This murderer could be anything except a sailor, a workman, or a bushman. He’s neither an Asian nor an aborigine.”

“He could be a club steward,” cut in Inspector Walters.

“Yes, he could be. He could be a ship’s steward, a gentleman’s valet, or a senior non-commissioned soldier whose duty for years was the maintenance of camp cleanliness. That dying dog gets on my nerves.”

“Looks as though the killer bashed it. What am I supposed to be doing?”

“There’s nothing much you can do, Walters,” Bony said decisively. “We can go through the place for fingerprints, but we won’t find the prints of the murderer. I do know that he wears your size in shoes. I do know that his stride is twenty-one inches… the same as yours. I do know that he wears the heels of his shoes more rapidly on the inside than the outside… like you do. Further, I know that his weight is approximately your weight, and I have observed that you keep your desk meticulously tidy.”

“Damnation! You going to frame me?” demanded Walters.

“I am going to frame this murderer if I have to track him ten times round the world. Ah, thanks, Sawtell. Both of you stand outside while I sweep the floor.”

As they had done at Dampier’s Hotel, the two men watched Bony sweep the entire floor of this room, and saw the dust and debris gently swept on to a sheet of paper.

“There’s no need for microscopic aid,” he said, holding the paper that they might see what he had collected. “The man with psoriasis was here. You establish how he entered the house. Sawtell can get on with the photography.”

Walters and the sergeant departed, obviously glad to break into action. Bony took the broom to the kitchen and swept that, the debris being added to his collection of specimens. In it he found no large piece of sloughed skin, but did see specks of what might be similar particles. On the floor here, as well as on the passage and bedroom floors, were the tracks of a man he had seen first on the front drive. The round object adhering to the left sole had left its imprint on the linoleum more plainly than the outline of the sole.

Nothing could be done for the unfortunate dog. It was unconscious, and every bone in its body seemed broken.

The day was departing with its usual haste in this latitude, and Bony hurried outside to examine the path running away to the rear gate. On this path he found the tracks of the man who had been inside the house. At one place only did he see the print of the naked foot, and that proved that the shoeless man had passed this way after the other. There were no children’s footprints, and no prints of a woman’s shoes. Here and there were the tracks of the little dog.

Bony came to the gate, a wicket gate in the wire fence. Beyond the fence was the usual laneway, and beyond that a wide paddock covered with patches of wire-grass. There still remained sufficient light to enable Bony to see that the man who had been in the house had passed through the gateway and then crossed the lane and entered the paddock. The bare-footed man had done the same. It was clear he had followed the other.

Bony returned to the house, where, in the kitchen, Sawtell said that the murderer had forced the scullery window to gain entry, and had left by the kitchen door, taking the key with him. Walters arrived from the front, and mentioned the doctor in a manner indicating recognition of Bony’s authority in this case.

“Will you return to the office, Sawtell, and ring the doctor. Return at once with the printing gear. Leave by the front door and return that way. Leave Abie till the morning. The light’s gone now.”